April Weight Loss Challenge

Ok, so I decided to do another challenge for anyone who wants to participate. Essentially, I am doing these for myself. By integrating my visitors into what I am doing, it gives me motivation to succeed. With spring in the air and the summer months just around the bend, it’s time to get rid of some extra mass. For this challenge, I am making it a bit more involved than merely watching calories.

What Is Involved with April’s Weight Loss Challenge

The last couple of challenges were more centered around watching what I ate and keeping within a certain number of calories in the green according to MyFitnessPal. This time around, we’re also going to add in points from Exercise.com. Combined, this will help me get into a routine of fitness and help me keep on task. In fact, I think I’m also going to start producing YouTube videos for the site.

Watching the Food
First of all, we’re going to implement keeping calories in the green. This month, lets focus on keeping the food intake to 500 or better. If you want to follow along, MyFitnessPal is a free and easy system to use. At any rate, we’ll work to keep the calories in the green through physical activity.

Calorie Burn
My Fitbit Charge HR tracks the calories I burn in any given day. I have set this goal to be at least 3500. As soon as I hit this number, my wristband vibrates. Since my body will burn eight calories every five minutes when sitting idle, I would need to burn an extra 1,196 calories through workouts. This is actually quite an easy thing to accomplish as long as I dedicate at least 45 minutes throughout the day for exercising or other physical activity.

Getting Points on Exercise.com
Although you get more points on Exercise.com through weight training, I am going to do a great deal of cardio. Because of this balance of physical activity, let’s set the points to something that is realistic – especially since I am still considered obese. In this challenge, we’ll focus on a weekly average of 500 points per day. This means that you’ll have to commit to several workout sessions per day. For example, I usually only get about 150 points when playing the Xbox for 30 minutes. Luckily, adding in weight workouts can help keep those numbers up.

Exercise.com puts more emphasis on weights than cardio. This is OK, though. I want to get a bit more muscle mass than I have now. I just don’t want to Hulk out.

Expanding the Mileage
So, the whole purpose of this website is to help me get into shape to ride across the state of Colorado. I think it’s time we start getting some serious bike riding in. I’ll need to start lengthening my distance, which is going to be quite a pain being as out of shape as I am. I use Runkeeper to track my mileage, and I only got 5.2 miles between riding and walking in March. This time, I am going to try and get three miles per week. I know this doesn’t sound like a lot, but I’d rather start slow than give myself a heart attack. Feel free to blow me out of the water if you can do more. Maybe your miles will motivate me through my competitive nature.

Increasing Sleep Average
Usually, I average just over six hours of sleep per night. This is wearing me down really fast, especially since I am getting too old to stay awake longer. I cannot survive off of four hours of sleep like I used to. As such, I need to start getting into bed within the 10:00pm time span. This might increase my average by almost an hour. A lot of health benefits come from sleeping well. I guess I’ll see just how much of a benefit there is after a month.

More Kinect Reviews this Month
To help me get motivated to burn some calories, I am going to develop more Kinect reviews this month. This will give me purpose to play the menagerie of games I have collected over time. Perhaps I’ll even assemble the games on a page to show you which titles were the most productive for calorie burn.

Putting It All Together to Shed Calories

So, this is my April challenge. By the end of the month, I should have accomplished:

15,000 calories in the green

Burn an extra 35,880 calories through physical activity

15,000 points through Exercise.com

12 miles of bike riding – which should be quite easy to accomplish

Adding another 30 hours total of sleep this month

Create at least five reviews for Kinect games for this website

I have my work cut out for me. For a procrastinator such as myself, this may be quite difficult at times to maintain. However, I believe in myself and have faith that I can accomplish all of these goals. If not more. Each week, I’ll write a progression article if you’re interested in following me. If you’re curious as to how I am doing, I am on Twitter every day – feel free to drop me a line.

In previous attempts, I’ve been able to shed between eight and 10 pounds per week. With the increase of activity I’ll be doing this month, I am pretty sure that I will set a few personal records. That’s what this is all about. Finding your limitations and surpassing them through continued effort. I will be dressed up as a superhero on Halloween.

Michael Brockbank

Michael is a work at home father who has completed a wide assortment of writing regarding various topics. Currently, he is working to achieve a weight loss goal and improve health in order to cross the state of Colorado on bicycle.